The costs of crossing the president
By: Bruce J. Schulman April 20, 2010 05:20 AM EDT

Will the White House punish Democrats who defected on the monumental health care overhaul?

“There is not a whole lot of [President] Barack Obama and [Vice President] Joe Biden to spare on a good day,” one senior White House official told POLITICO. “We’re going to have to focus on our friends.”

As for the five House Democrats who reversed their positions to vote against the final bill, another Obama aide said, “We appreciate the people who hung with us.”

The implied political hardball has drawn protests from some legislators. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman, for example, now talks about the need to help all Democrats.

But Obama’s approach is hardly novel.

Many presidents have aggressively disciplined wayward legislators: manipulating committee slots, stripping privileges, even campaigning against them in primaries.

Effective presidents, particularly those with ambitious agendas, need to clarify for members of Congress the benefits of cooperation — and the costs of opposition.

But they must calibrate their actions, avoiding the impression that they are interfering on congressional prerogatives or voters’ preferences.

Like Obama, President Franklin D. Roosevelt came to Washington with a large Democratic majority. His was also divided into competing regional and ideological blocs, with many freshmen.

The administration and its Capitol Hill allies created new committees to siphon away opposition.

If anyone doubted the identity of the real chief legislator, House Speaker Henry T. Rainey made it clear: “We will put over Mr. Roosevelt’s program.”

During the 1938 midterms, Roosevelt stepped up pressure on recalcitrant lawmakers, campaigning against conservative Southern opponents of the New Deal.

He worked behind the scenes to unseat powerful critics like Virginia Sen. Harry Byrd. But FDR was so incensed by Democratic New Deal opponents in Georgia and South Carolina that he openly targeted them.

FDR, according to one aide, wanted “to make an object lesson” of Georgia Sen. Walter George “because he thought such a defeat would furnish a lasting lesson to the Southern bloc in Congress” — conservative Democrats who helped torpedo parts of Roosevelt’s agenda.

FDR assured Georgia voters that George was his “friend” but said that if he were voting in his “other state” primary, he would “most assuredly cast his ballot” for George’s opponent.

Roosevelt also lambasted South Carolina Sen. Ellison “Cotton Ed” Smith — a mossback opponent of reform (Time magazine called him “a conscientious objector to the 20th century”) — who was facing a tough fight from popular pro-New Deal Gov. Olin Johnston.

Angered by Smith’s actions, FDR miscalculated the effect of his involvement in local politics. Normally a shrewd tactician, FDR allowed his actions to become a campaign issue.

George called Roosevelt’s appearance “a second march through Georgia.”

FDR’s statements even forced some liberal state officials to remain aloof. But after Georgia Gov. Eurith Rivers, architect of the state’s “Little New Deal,” remained neutral, FDR halted Georgia’s public works aid for nearly a year.

Despite this, Smith and George held their seats.

Though President Lyndon B. Johnson was aware of Roosevelt’s overreaching, he still subjected Capitol Hill Democrats to tough love. After 30 years in the House and Senate, Johnson made management of Congress central to his presidency.

Though there wasn’t an explicit quid pro quo, cooperation yielded congressmen myriad benefits: invitations to the White House and flattering photo ops, appointments for associates, junkets and big donations from Johnson backers.

After his 1964 landslide, LBJ induced House leaders to change the criteria for assignments to the Ways and Means and Appropriations committees.

“This change,” said Larry O’Brien, LBJ’s congressional liaison, after which both committees were stacked with loyalists, “means half the battle of enacting the Johnson program is over.”

The other half required riding herd on the Democratic majority. As O’Brien said of one key vote: “If we can just keep the boys that should be sober, sober, and the ones that should be drinking, drinking, that’s our job for the afternoon.”

Obstructionist Democrats found themselves with no influence on appointments, relegated to insignificant committees and excluded from politically beneficial events. When they sought money for their districts, they found coffers bare.

But after the 1964 victory, Passman feared that Johnson and a loyal Texan installed as appropriations chairman might weaken his hold over the Foreign Operations subcommittee. So Passman began approving higher aid budgets.

He was no fool. Working through House Speaker John McCormack, LBJ stripped recalcitrant members of their seniority.

The caucus similarly rebuked two Democratic opponents of civil rights, Reps. John Bell Williams of Mississippi and Albert Watson of South Carolina, for supporting Johnson’s opponent in 1964.

The punishment drove Williams out of Washington and Watson into the Republican Party.

But Johnson rarely asked members of Congress to cast votes that might put them in political jeopardy. Unlike FDR in 1938, he understood he could push only so far.

Obama seems to be similarly fine-tuning his tactics. He refrained from punishing Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). Choosing House members who had initially voted for health care, he first targeted disloyal Democrats with seemingly little to gain from a “no” vote — because they had already voted yes on health reform.

Withholding support signals the costs of recalcitrance without resorting to heavy-handed punishments.

Strategically stealing pages from the FDR and LBJ playbooks, Obama may prove a more deft chief legislator than anyone imagined.

Bruce J. Schulman, Huntington professor of history at Boston University, is the author of “The ’70s: The Great Shift in American Culture” and “Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism.”